1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a safety system for a weapon, and more particularly, to a safety system for disabling a weapon by use of an electronic disabling mechanism.
2. Description of the Related Art
Being a law enforcement officer is a dangerous profession. All too often, officer's deal with unscrupulous individuals who have little regard for the safety of others, and even less regard for the safety of the law unenforcement officer. Law enforcement officers frequently encounter situations where an offender is to be neutralized and arrest. Frequently, a scuffle may ensue between the officer and the perpetrator in which both try to gain possession of the officer's weapon.
Although an officer is trained in techniques to prevent the felon from disarming them, these techniques are not full proof, and oftentimes, the offender may overpower the officer and gain control of the weapon. The grave concern then is that the felon will use the officer's own gun to shoot him. Unfortunately, this is an imminent concern as many police officer's are shot and killed each year by perpetrator's who shoot them with their own weapon.
Various proposed solutions have been proposed to lessen the likelihood of a perpetrator disarming the officer and being able to use the officer's weapon against him. One such example includes U.S. Pat. No. 5,603,180 which requires the entire handle of a revolver to be replaced with a modified handle including circuitry for disarming an assailant. The disadvantage of this concept, as well as various other conventional proposed solutions, is the weapon must be significantly altered to embed all of the circuitry within the handle of the revolver. This process is cumbersome, very costly and/or not easily adaptable for a conventional revolver as originally purchased by a consumer. Although not shown, the firing pin arrangement would have to be substantially modified to account for these traditional proposed solutions thereby rendering these solutions awkward, expensive and require extensive modifications to the revolver.
There is still a longstanding need to provide a non-lethal solution to the problem of disarming and temporarily incapacitating a person carrying a weapon without doing substantial long-term damage. In accordance with this invention, an exemplary safety system is proposed for disarming a felon from using the weapon by use of an electronic disabling mechanism.